What do you mean “alleged” killer? Has anyone disputed that Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown? Has Darren Wilson (or his attorney) disputed that he killed Michael Brown?
Everyone seems to be in agreement that Michael Brown was shot to death, and now the police department has named the officer who shot him. That’s not an “allegation,” it’s a matter of public record.
Anonymous (?) turned it up in family photos - it’s hanging in his tv room.
Would you please elaborate on how the Chief of Police allegedly chooses to decorate his home( as tacky as it is ) relates to the guilt of the accused? Especially when the Chief of Police is not the one accused of shooting Michael Brown?
Please, answer while keeping in mind that the decedent is in several well known images making criminal gang signs.
I have a friend who did almost this exact same thing last year; he picked up a box of cigars and walked out of a store without paying - whilst being brown. In his case he was arrested at an airport a week later and charged, held in custody until his family stepped in and sorted out the matter informally with the store owner. He was then cautioned and released
Apparently it’s unusual to even detain someone for that kind of petty shoplifting in Britain, rather than just identifying who they are and issuing them a court summons. His lawyer thinks his detention was racially motivated and they’re suing. They have documented cases of white girls pulling the same stunt and getting soft treatment, e.g. moving straight to an informal resolution without any charging or detention. In America he could have wound up dead.
I’d like to see the police officer put on trial for his alleged offence, certainly; then a court can hear whether he really did pull the trigger, and whether Mike Brown really is dead, etc.
Whilst being brown… your emphasis This is an interesting distinction.
Is shoplifting legal in your country if you are NOT brown?
If so, can I know the name of your country? I would like to visit.
You should find the answers to your questions in danegeld’s post. Learn to read the entire post before commenting. It’s not hard.
How about a big old Nazi flag? Purely for decoration of course, it doesn’t mean anything.
BTW, nobody’s been “accused” of anything yet. We know the officer shot him. people would like to see him accused, ie charged with something.
Are you saying the chief’s home decor would become relevant if someone shot him? It would be nice if your incoherent passive aggressive babblin ever comes around to making a point. Benghazi!
A confederate flag might be somewhat more defensible in the deep south states as “part of our culture and history!”, but Missouri was a border state:
Missouri sent more than 2x as many troops to the Union side as the Confederate side.
Of course, Dred Scott was also decided in St. Louis, MO, so… it’s complicated. Lots of racially charged history in the area, for sure. And Ferguson itself, according to graphs I saw, went from predominantly white to overwhelmingly black in a few decades.
Not usually changes that happen without some discomfort on all sides.
Ugh, leave it to USA Today to pick the worst possible infographic format to convey that information. For example, at a glance the fourth graphic seems to imply that the vast majority of the population is white since the blue area makes up most of the circle.
They should have used a pie chart in which color represented race and diameter represented the overall size of the population.
Did he? I presume he was innocent.
All we know is there was one person who was uninterested in that presumption, despite his oath.
Missouri is complicated. They WERE a slave state, and there were factions of pro-slavery people who went into Kansas to make it a slave state as well. They employed tactics like illegal voting, as well as out right killing people, giving it the name Bleeding Kansas.
Interestingly, there is a living history place near Lees Summit called Missouri Town 1855. Which I didn’t realize when I went, takes place before the civil war. The most interesting place I found was the lawyers building, where the local lawyer was mulling over the politics of the day with the locals, and asked me what I thought about Kansas and slavery. I said something like, “Well it should be the territories decision to vote which way it wanted to go.” Some one else (in character) piped up, “That’s right. They should vote on it. Some of us voted 5 or 6 times.”
http://www.jacksongov.org/missouritown/
I’m from Kansas, though I live near KC, MO right now. I see it as pretty laid back. But I’ve been deeper in the state which gave me a more “good ol’ boy” Southern feel. YMMV.
I presume the chart style was purposefully confusing.
Yeah the flipping of inner and outer made that chart suck. I’ll throw that one on Tufte’s burn pile.
Maybe, but that’s really more Fox News territory. USA Today’s agenda is usually just concerned with dumbing everything down to a second grade reading level.
In this case my money is on “somebody thought it would be neat to make the infographic resemble the newspaper’s logo.”
Maybe they were aiming for something more this style:
http://www.dsr.wa.gov.au/assets/images/Diagrams/100m-air-rifle-range.gif
I’ll call this infographic “percentage of black Ferguson residents seen as having constitutionally guaranteed rights by various factions of MO police”.
Only, we do. I’ve read stories like that right here. Try again.
So… if you’re done deflecting, would care to take a crack at the answer?
Well I guess you just schooled me. Now my day is ruined. Well played.
Interesting that you call it deflecting.
Because what the question you’re asking him to answer
…is kind of a bull$@^% question.
Nobody said “the police chief hangs a confederate flag, therefore the person who shot Michael Brown is guilty.” Nobody implied it. You brought it up out of thin air.
It’s a fact in and of itself. It may relate to many other things that are important in this investigation, such as providing evidence of a racial bias at the highest levels which can trickle down to the men under his command. It could suggest reasons why he might try to protect an officer who wrongly shot a black man. At the very least, it’s more evidence of a startling insensitivity to racial issues.
These are points worthy of investigation or comment on their own, even if they don’t directly relate to the shooting.
And your bull$!#% question was an attempt to deflect from that.
I find it disappointing that the person that I replied to did not reply; I consider that person to be intelligent.
But, I guess that you will do in a fix, I begin:
No, I did not know before this thread that the Chief of Police had a Confederate Flag in their house. ( shit, how would I know that? ).
You might be well served to review the thread.
Its a far cry to assume that the police-persons of Ferguson are familiar with the Chiefs decor and are basing life decisions on it.
Sorry, but you are incorrect.
I posed this question to challenge all the law-and-order types to use their minds instead of letting MSNBC make their decisions for them.
I see that I’m failing.
Anyway, thanks for your response, even though it was not very challenging.
… I never said that. I don’t get where, in any of what I said, you get the impression that I accused you of knowing before the thread started that the Chief of Police had a Confederate Flag in their house. I didn’t even use the word “thread!” I suppose maybe you might have thought I was saying you brought up the topic of him having a confederate flag in the first place out of thin air, but… from context, I think it’s pretty clear I meant you brought up topic of there being a proposed CONNECTION between the flag and the accused guilt out of thin air, only to try and attack it.
You either REALLY have a problem with reading, or you’re being willfully ignorant. Considering you started the reply with a snide little insult about my intelligence, I don’t think either serves you well.
I’ll try again, though: I said that your question was about how the chief’s decor relates to the guilt of the accused, and that nobody said that it did directly relate to it, you’re the one coming up with the connection, trying to deflect the issue as if only “the chief has a confederate flag up, THEREFORE the accused is guilty” is good enough reason to point it out, and then only if you can back it up. Well, yes, IF you said that you should back it up. But nobody said that.
If the Chief of Police (and, I hasten to add, there’s no evidence that this is the case) was an outright KKK member and there was a photograph of him burning a cross and evidence that he wrote essays about how black people are animals and should be sent back to Africa, you could still ask the same type of question “Would you please elaborate on how this Chief spends his free time relates to the guilt of the accused” and it would be no more legitimate than this time.
There are plenty of other reasons to bring the topic up.
Yes, because that’s the only way it can happen. That’s exactly what we’re proposing, that the flag itself causes things (this, since you have had trouble reading intent before, is sarcasm, btw).
Instead of, say, the Chief of Police having racially charged beliefs, or at the very least a stunning insensitivity (and what you do you think the odds are that he’s had many black people over for dinner to see his decoration?) that cause him not only to hang a confederate flag in his home, but also to be less willing to hire black officers, to be more willing to overlook bias in the officers he does assign, to help cover up if they do cross the line because they’re just good folks who made a bad decision in the moment, all of which contributes to the culture of what’s going on. He can do these things even without being a KKK member or deliberately trying to racially discriminate.
Does he do all these things? We don’t know for sure. My guess is, probably some of it, at least unconsciously. But whatever the case, Ferguson under his watch, does not look good, and this is one more data point in that. There’s also the case a few years ago where Ferguson police dragged an innocent black man in under a warrant for somebody else with a similar name, beat him, then charged him with vandalism for getting blood on their uniforms (also, those doing the charging, when asked in depositions, denied that he ever did get blood on their uniforms, so they either lied when they charged him or they lied under oath, and I believe they’re still on the job). How does that directly relate to the guilt of the accused in this case? It doesn’t, obviously, and you’d be a fool to say it does. But it suggests that there’s a culture that cops feel free to lie and abuse and be more violent with minorities and have the belief that they’ll get away with it.
And he’s the Chief of Police. If he’s not doing everything he can to change that, he shouldn’t be there.
I’ve never watched MSNBC myself (I may have occasionally seen clips from it, but it’s difficult to pay attention to the source of every clip I’ve seen on the Internet… reasonably sure I haven’t seen any about Ferguson), so they don’t make any of my decisions for me. I can’t speak to others, if MSNBC is shooting mind-control rays like you seem to believe. So far the people you posed the question to seem to be the logical ones here and you repeatedly have taken spurious inferences from what they’ve said, either out of a lack of your own intelligence, or a desire to deflect the issue. I don’t know which. But perhaps if you want to challenge others to use their minds, you should try using your own first.
